Renton has experienced tremendous population growth in recent years, its number of residents having tripled since 1980. But clearly not all neighborhoods and citizens have benefited. One district in particular that has suffered significant decline is the Sunset/Renton Highlands area east of Interstate 405. Originally built during and after World War II as publicly funded workforce housing, Sunset today is characterized by outdated and deteriorating buildings, declining home ownership, poorly maintained infrastructure, and increasing crime. The neighborhood is a suburban pocket of poverty, with two-thirds of its elementary school children qualifying for lunch subsidies and 40 percent lacking proficiency in English.

But things are finally looking up, thanks to a thoroughly and thoughtfully constructed investment strategy that is now being implemented for a 269-acre district designated by the city. Led by Mithun, an architecture firm nationally known for sustainable design, the new plan is ambitious and green, promising major upgrades to housing, a range of public community amenities, the street network, and storm water control. The strategy emerged from a community-driven planning process featuring a survey, focus groups, public workshops, and two important task forces with significant community representation.

Expanded early childhood learning facilities and a new, ADA-accessible playground

Community gardens

"Complete streets" designed to be walkable and multi-modal, with integrated green infrastructure for storm water control

Through transit orientation and compact urban development, the strategy is expected to reduce energy use by 26,383 million BTU per year, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 3,907 metric tons per year. Stormwater modeling predicts that the strategy will also reduce polluted runoff with sophisticated approaches equivalent to removing 41.8 acres of impervious surfaces from the neighborhood.

The plan provides for a total of 2,510 new homes and 1.25 million square feet of service and retail. The Renton Housing Authority, in particular, is expected to add approximately 480 new public, nonpublic affordable, and market-rate homes. (Sunset's current land uses comprise some of everything, from residential to public to commercial and, of course, surface parking lots.)

The neighborhood's most prominent thoroughfare, Sunset Boulevard, will become a real, tree-lined boulevard, thanks to the city’s great Green Connections program, which will bring environmental upgrades to ten key street segments in the Sunset area. In particular, these segments will be rebuilt with “features that enhance the pedestrian experience such as wider sidewalks, narrower travel lanes for vehicles, and landscaping” while simultaneously integrating green infrastructure - in this case rain gardens and permeable walkways that receive rainwater and direct it through a bioretention soil mix and into the ground - to manage storm water. Additional rain gardens are planned throughout the neighborhood. (Hey, it rains a lot around Seattle.) Intersections will be enhanced to facilitate pedestrian crossings. The details are in a 104-page (including technical appendices) “Sunset Area Surface Water Master Plan,” prepared by the planning firm CH2MHILL.

A challenge for the city throughout the planning process, and now in implementation, is that the Sunset area has no majority landowner. But the city, the school district, and the Renton Housing Authority together control quite a bit of land (and, of course, infrastructure) in the district, enabling the public sector to play a major role in its revitalization. Ground was broken last fall on Glennwood Townhomes, a new eight-unit development in the Sunset Terrace area in the heart of the neighborhood. The project constitutes the first replacement housing for the redevelopment of the longstanding public housing site. And it's just the start for what should become a model revitalization for Renton and its residents.

About the Author

Kaid Benfield is the director of the Sustainable Communities and Smart Growth program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, co-founder of the LEED for Neighborhood Development rating system, and co-founder of Smart Growth America.
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Kaid Benfield is the director of the Sustainable Communities
and Smart Growth program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, co-founder
of the LEED for Neighborhood Development rating system, and co-founder of Smart
Growth America. He is the author or co-author of Once There
Were Greenfields (NRDC 1999), Solving
Sprawl (Island Press 2001), Smart Growth
In a Changing World (APA Planners Press 2007), and Green Community (APA Planners Press 2009). In 2009,
Kaid was voted one of the "top urban thinkers" on Planetizen.com, and
he was named one of "the most influential people in sustainable planning
and development" in 2010 by the Partnership for Sustainable Communities.
He blogs at NRDC's Switchboard.